The Memory and the Reception of Jesus in Early Christianity Conference was held on Friday 10th to Saturday 11th June 2016, at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Some of the lectures from this conference are now available on YouTube:

Professor Willi Braun (University of Alberta) asks “When and Why Did the Gospel of Mark Become a Christian Text?’ in a lecture delivered at the Institut für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft at the University of Hanover, on May 15, 2012.

Professor William Arnal (University of Regina) addresses the question “Just how ‘Christian’ were the first Christians?” with reference to the Gospels of Thomas and Mark. His answer is, not at all. The lecture was delivered at the Institut für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft at the University of Hanover, on May 28, 2013.

Professor Helen Bond delivered her inaugural professorial lecture, and the opening lecture for the 2015/16 academic year at the University of Edinburgh, on September 17, 2015. The title of the lecture was “Paragon of Discipleship or Parody of Kingship? Simon of Cyrene in Mark’s Gospel”. Bond argues that Mark did not present Simon of Cyrene’s carrying of Jesus’s cross as an exemplary act of discipleship, but that Mark employs Simon to further the Gospel’s presentation of Jesus as King.

Helen [Bond] is simply the best New Testament scholar currently in post in the UK.
– Paul Foster

The late Professor Richard T. France (1938-2012) delivered the 1989 Annual Moore College Lectures, “Divine Government: God’s Kingship in Mark” at Moore Theological College. Professor France was also the author of the New International Greek Testament Commentary, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Eerdmans Publishing, 2002).

Videos of the lectures in the series are available on Vimeo. All five lectures are also available in mp3 audio format (links below).

Wilderness is a term that elicits both fear and delight. It is in the wilderness that we recognise our vulnerability as humans and also our interconnectedness with other non-human life. Yet, we live in an age where wilderness is rapidly disappearing. Ancient forests are cut-down, mountain-tops levelled, and surging rivers are tamed, as human civilisation spreads across the globe. Does Jesus, whose earthly ministry begins in the wilderness (Mark 1:12-13), care about this loss of wild areas? What would Jesus do about climate-change, acidifying oceans, habitat destruction and species extinction?

In Mark 12:41-44, Jesus says of a poor widow who makes a donation to the Jerusalem Temple: “she has thrown in her whole life.” Is the widow exploited by a Jewish system that values money over compassion? Is she a faithful worshiper who reveals the Temple’s welcome of rich and poor, male and female? Is she a foreshadowing of Jesus, who will give up his life as a “ransom for many?” The answers depend upon the reader’s sensibilities.

Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences.

Mark Goodacre, Professor of New Testament at Duke University, provides a regular podcast on New Testament scholarship called NT Pod.

The major topics of these podcasts are the Gospels and Jesus scholarship, although Goodacre also addresses topics in Pauline scholarship, the apocryphal gospels, and other aspects of the New Testament. While the podcasts are short and succinct – usually 10 to 15 minutes – they provide clear, accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative overviews of many topics in New Testament scholarship.

Dr. Madeleine Boucher, former professor of New Testament and director of the Women’s Studies Program, Fordham University, presents a lecture examining what the Bible and tradition say about Mary Magdalene (July 22, 2009).

This lecture looks at the conflation of traditions of Mary Magdalene as well as Scripture references to clarify who this “Apostle to the Apostles” was and was not. Special focus is given to the resurrection narrative in John’s Gospel.

Timothée Colani’s Jésus-Christ et les croyances messianiques de son temps (1864), particularly famous for his argument that a ‘Little Apocalypse’ underlies Mark 13, is freely available in various forms here courtesy of the University of Michigan’s collections.

Emeritus Professor Larry Hurtado (formerly of the University of Edinburgh) makes available a large number of essays and articles on his personal website. The main topics are Jesus, the theory of early worship of Jesus, and the Gospels.

Examples include:

Son of Man–Hurtado. This is the pre-publication version of my essay published in ‘Who is This Son of Man’? Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling Expression of the Historical Jesus, eds. Larry W. Hurtado & Paul L. Owen (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 159-77.

The Women, the Tomb and the Ending of Mark The manuscript of my contribution published in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Sean Freyne, eds. Zuleika Rodgers & Margaret Daly-Denton (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 427-50.

Bauckham is the author of several works on Jesus and the Gospels, including Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006). Until 2007 he was Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of St Andrews.

According to the phonetic system used by the Oxford English Dictionary, Bauckham is pronounced Borkem…. For readers in the UK it may help to say that Bauckham rhymes with Morecambe, the name of the great English comedian Eric Morecambe of the duo Morecambe and Wise.
– “How to pronounce the name BAUCKHAM“

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